Kiss My What?

By

Doug Wall

Owning a condo for rent is a challenge. Having a condo not rented is a monthly financial hammer, slamming your check book and your life.

When a renter comes along, even when second thoughts occur, you sometimes just go for it.

After a friend of a friend called to say she was thinking about the condo that morning and that she would like to move in.

Well, she moved in, with no deposit, and partial payments coming in later and later. My letter requesting payment in full was met with indignation, and a very nasty phone call where we were the bad guys, and I was told to “shut up”, but much more colourfully. She actually said. STFU.

The relationship continued downhill. The mortgage payments were never, ever caught up to be current. Eventually after months of never being up to date, and two months of hesitation, I started the process of eviction. I had the sheriff deliver a notice requested her presence in court. This cost money.

A side note: when notified about a court appearance, the tenant has two weeks to respond. And any response lengthens the time until the court date occurs, which means, more weeks of non-payment. Of course, my tenant responded on the last day, lengthening the process more. When the court date arrives if the tenant shows up, the judge sends the litigants to negotiate. Thank goodness, the tenant did not show. I was automatically awarded my chance to evict my tenant.

The judge said, as he signed the notice of eviction, schedule your eviction date with the Sheriff.

I learned the facts of life; Evictions are scheduled as much as thirty days out, and no evictions could be schedule December 15 and December 31, Christmas and all. It could be forty five more days my non paying tenant could continue to enjoy living there without paying.

I delivered the eviction notice. I put a copy on the condo door.

Later that day a message was left on my answering machine from my angry, and I think slightly inebriated tenant, who purported to having a check under the doormat (a partial payment leaving more than a month overdue), and if I didn’t want that then I could kiss her butt, but again, much more colourfully spoken and screamed with the last word louder than the other two.

Kiss my *** , with a great crescendo.

I was angry at the time. I wanted her out. If a scheduled eviction is canceled, someone else can be moved up to the cancelled time slot. The first three days I called to see if a cancellation was available, I was told “No.”. The fourth call was the winner. I could evict the next day.

I was lucky. My tenant had already moved out. Of course, it was not ready for rental; More money, more money.

I came to realize that the inaction and delay to start the process and the tenant being able to use the system to the fullest would translate into approximately $3000.00 in lost rent and expenses.

After a time, it seemed a lot funnier than it did at the time. I have decided that when this particular lemon was thrown into my life, I needed to make a little lemonade. So, with her help, (remember, she left the message on my answering machine), I took the recording, snipped out everything except the three words, Kiss my ***, and created an audio file that plays and can be repeated again and again. For some reason, it now amuses me rather than making me mad. So I play it and smile.

Here is where I hope to make a little lemonade.

Click the link to hear her message. If you would like to have a copy of the file, email me at doug@janiwall.com I will email you the file so that you can play at any time you wish for your personal use, It IS fun. Try it.

If you would like to use this file on your website, please contact me at the email address above for royalty information.